Woman wins lotto while fleeing Hurricane Irma

OCOEE, Fla. (WOFL FOX 35) - An Ocoee, Florida woman who evacuated her Central Florida home ahead of Hurricane Irma ended up with a winning lotto ticket.

Tiffany Hatfield says she was on the road in North Carolina with her three kids when she made a quick stop and spent $5 on a scratch off ticket.

“I was like, ‘This can't be right. I'm seeing it wrong. There's no way,’” Hatfield said. “I had my oldest daughter look at it and she started screaming.”

Hatfield says her husband, who’s in the Navy and deployed right now, told her it would be a good idea to leave before the storm. Hatfield says she and the girls have been staying with her sister in Ocoee while her husband is away. 

“At three in the morning, we were in bumper-to,bumper traffic in the Carolinas. Anybody else could have stopped at that store, anybody else could have bought that ticket,” Hatfield explained.

She held onto it for dear life for a few days before finally picking up the check and heading back to Florida.

“I owe Irma that $10,000 dollars,” Hatfield joked.

She says she’ll use some of it to pay the bills, but she’ll save the rest for when her husband gets home.

“When he gets here, it'll be almost a year and a half so we need to do something fun,” she said.

And the icing on the cake for this family – Hatfield says the same day she won the lottery she got a job offer. She plans to move out of her sister’s home soon.